


if you never try you'll never know

by milominderbinder



Series: maia's shameless fic a day in the month of may [25]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: AU, M/M, Nurse!Mickey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:08:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milominderbinder/pseuds/milominderbinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carl has a throwing star related mishap, and Ian's the one to drag him to the emergency room.  He would be more upset about this, except it's pretty much an every-other week occurrence, and the injury's not that bad, nothing they haven't all had more than once before.</p><p>What's far more unusual is the grumpy-but-surprisingly-competent nurse who catches Ian's eye while they're there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you never try you'll never know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [candyvan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candyvan/gifts).



It starts with Carl stabbing himself in the leg with a ninja star.   _Again._

Ian’s the only one home at the time, so he’s the one who has to deal with it.  The cut’s not too deep, but it’s bleeding a hell of a lot, clearly not something that can be fixed by Vee’s bandaids and ibuprofen.  So Ian borrows Kev’s truck, and hauls Carl off to the emergency room.  He’d be panicking more, except this happens every other week.

\--

Mickey skids into the nurses locker room five minutes after his shift is supposed to start, mumbling curse words under his breath and struggling to pull off his jacket.  As soon as he gets it off, he shoves it into his locker and grabs the first clean scrub top he sees, dragging it on over the top of his long-sleeved t shirt.  The stupid fucking El had been running slow as usual, so it’s not exactly his fault, but he knows his asshole boss will ream him regardless if he’s caught.

He thanks the universe that he’s already wearing his scrub pants and sneakers, because as soon as he’s shoved his backpack into his locker - which is no easy task, since the thing is crammed full of junk - he races out of the room, and towards the nurses station.  Apparently there is some mercy in the world, because his boss is nowhere to be seen - in fact, the desk is pretty much deserted.  The only person sat behind it is Jackie, Mickey’s favourite co-worker.  The frown he’s been wearing all morning softens, and he heads over to her.

“Mmm, you looking fine in those scrubs, Mick!” she says as a greeting, giving him a flirtatious smile.

“Hey, don’t I always?” he jokes.  He leans over the desk and steals the pen out of the pocket of her scrubs, then heads around to the stack of patient charts, to try and figure out where he’s supposed to be.

“You know that’s right.  If I were ten years younger…” Jackie responds, clicking away at something on the computer without taking her eyes off him.

“If you were ten years younger you’d be fifty and I still wouldn’t stick my dick in you, Jackie.”  

\--

Ian’s pretty sure they get the worst doctor in the whole hospital.

Of course, the guy doesn’t _think_ he’s the worst.  That’s part of what makes him suck so much.  Carl’s sat on the bed, his leg still bleeding pretty hard, and he’s looking like he’s in so much pain he might start crying any second - which, for Carl, is a _lot_ of pain.  But the doctor doesn’t seem to care at all, is poking and prodding at the wound like he doesn’t realise it’s attached to a human body at all, watching with a kind of aloof disinterest as Carl squirms.  Ian hovers by the edge of the bed, resisting the urge to try and hold Carl’s hand - he knows that would just embarrass him.  Still.  Ian’s had his fair share of injuries - he knows how much it sucks.

“Well, it’s not too deep, and it hasn’t hit anything major,” the doctor eventually says, when Ian’s just about feeling ready to punch him.  “But given the state of _that -”_ He nods to the rusty, bloody ninja star which Carl is still clutching “- I’m going to give him a tetanus shot, as well, just to be safe.”

He stands up and pulls off his gloves.

“That’s it?” Ian asks. He shoots a glance over at Carl, who is biting his lip and staring up at the ceiling, clearly trying to distract himself.

“That’s it,” the doctor responds.  “I’ll send a nurse over to give him the shot and dress the wound.”

\--

Mickey’s heading to a supply closet to stock up on tongue depressors when his least favourite person in the hospital catches him.

It’s Dr Vincent, an asshole who hates Mickey just because he doesn’t plaster on a smile all the time and simper after the doctors.  Usually Mickey tries to avoid him, but occasionally the urge to make the guy’s life harder is too strong to resist - of course, nobody can prove _anything_ about the fact that his car tyres get occasionally slashed.

Dr Vincent accosts Mickey just as he’s leaving a patient’s room, grabs him by the arm.  Mickey resists the gut reaction to punch him.

“Go deal with bed seventeen,” Vincent says, his voice bored.  “Tetanus shot and a wound dressing, then send him home.  It’s a dumb ghetto kid with blood pouring out of his leg, you can’t miss him.”

Then he stalks away.  Mickey scowls at his back, flexes his hands, itching to curl them into fists and start something.

“Asshole,” he mutters instead, turning around to head back to the ward.  He may hate the guy, but ignoring his orders only leaves some kid bleeding and nobody any better off.

To his surprise, though, there’s suddenly a snort of laughter behind him.  He spins around - and is met with the sight of the hottest guy he’s seen in a real long while.  Tall and muscled with flaming red hair and a grin on his face - and he’s looking at _Mickey._

“That’s the worst doctor I’ve ever met,” the guy says, nodding his head after Dr Vincent.  He’s holding two steaming paper cups in his hands, which Mickey recognises only too well as tea from the shitty hospital cafeteria.

“Yeah,” he agrees, feeling a little dazed.  “Uh, if you ever want to key his car, I can tell you which one it is.”

The guy laughs again, and stares at Mickey for a second longer, eyes bright and amused and somehow captivating.  Then he shakes his head, and walks off.

It takes Mickey a few seconds to remember what he was supposed to be doing.  Right.  Supply cupboard.  Bandages and disinfectant and a tetanus shot.   _Focus._

\--

Carl, predictably, doesn’t want his tea.  Ian doesn’t especially want his either, but he puts up with it, sipping at the vaguely-flavoured water that apparently passes for tea here.  It’s been ages since the doctor looked at Carl, and though his leg has stopped bleeding, it’s still only covered by the temporary bandage the doctor had slapped onto it, covered in blood.  Ian wishes someone would hurry up and _help_ them already.

When the curtains around Carl’s bed are pulled back and a nurse walks in, Ian’s jaw drops open a little.  It’s the nurse he’d seen a minute ago in the corridor - the cute, scruffy guy with the tattoos, who’d seemed to hate Carl’s doctor as much as Ian did.  In that moment, with the light from the waiting room streaming in the gap in the curtains and surrounding him, the guy seems kind of like an angel.  Ian stares dopily for a second before forcing his face back into an appropriate expression, taking a hurried sip of his gross tea just to distract himself.

The nurse seems a little surprised to see Ian, too, but recovers quickly, pulling a stool over to the edge of the bed and unwrapping a needle with practiced ease.  He looks up at Carl, not smiling, but somehow reassuring anyway.  Ian catches a glimpse of the hospital ID hanging around the guy’s neck - his name is _Mickey Milkovich._ Mickey Milkovich.  Ian repeats it a few times in his head.  That’s a good name.

“I don’t want the shot,” Carl says as soon as he spots the needle, voice overly hostile to try and hide the fact that it’s trembling just a little.  Mickey raises his eyebrows, unimpressed.  “I’m serious, man, I’m fine, I’ve cut myself with that star a shit ton of times and it never got infected or anything like that - I don’t need the shot.”

Mickey silences Carl with a look, grabs his arm, and shoves the needle into it.

Ian watches as Carl’s whole body tenses up, but when the needle is pulled back out, he immediately relaxes.  Then Carl looks at Mickey, frowning.

“How the fuck’d you do that?” he asks suspiciously, as Mickey’s taping a piece of cotton wool over the pinprick in Carl’s arm.  “That didn’t hurt at all.  Did you even _do_ it?”

Mickey just shrugs, scowls a little.

“Surprisingly, I’m kind of good at my own fucking job,” he says, already working on cleaning the blood off Carl’s leg.

Ian isn’t totally sure why, but he finds himself grinning.  Mickey the grumpy nurse is pretty great.

\--

As Mickey washes and dresses the kid’s wound, he can feel the other guy staring at him.  He tries not to focus on it, but dressing a shallow cut is something he’s done a thousand times before, and hardly enough to occupy his full brain.  An incredibly hot guy with an ambiguous relationship to an accident prone kid, though, _is_ something unusual, and as such he kind of can’t stop thinking about it.

“So you his dad or what?” he asks eventually, when the curiosity gets the better of him.  “What were you like, twelve when you had him?”

The guys laughs, loud and bright, like he had before when Mickey had insulted the doctor.  Mickey has no fucking idea why and it feels ridiculous, _beyond_ ridiculous, but this guy’s laugh actually makes him feel kind of - _warm._ Like there’s a little nook of happiness buried somewhere deep down inside of him, and it’s spreading outwards.  That’s not something Mickey’s used to feeling.

“I’m Ian, his _brother_ ,” the guy says, when he’s done laughing and confusing Mickey’s world. “I was seven when he was born.” Then a look of hesitation passes across his face, which Mickey watches with far too much interest, before he continues - “Anyway, I don’t fuck girls, so that’d be a little hard to achieve even if I _had_ hit puberty.”

Mickey’s fingers go numb for a second, and he drops a scalpel.

Swearing, he quickly scoops it back up off the ground, and tosses it into the waste basket.  That was a fucking dumb reaction, he thinks, Ian probably thinks he’s a homophobic bag of dicks now.  Which is - the opposite of true, actually.

The only person Mickey’s told about himself is Mandy.  But he’s known about it pretty much his whole life.  Known he was different - _gay,_ he’s known he was gay.  And he’s hardly a virgin, so the handful of guys he’s fucked know about him too, obviously.  But he’s not _out._ In their neighborhood, he’s not sure how anyone _could_ be, without getting stabbed every single time they left the house.  And yet, here’s this guy, Ian, announcing his preferences to strangers he’s only just met.  Mickey knows he doesn’t give off the most accepting impression, either - he’s cleaner these days than he used to be, has to be for his job, but he can’t scrub off the tattoos or the scars or the general hostile energy growing up in the south side has instilled him with.  Ian just took a _majorly_ big chance that Mickey wouldn’t beat him up for saying that.

By the time Mickey’s realised all that, it’s awkward.  He’s taken a few seconds too long for any response to be natural, but not responding at all is weird too - he gives a half grunt, half shrug, and turns back to the kid’s leg with a renewed focus.  The sooner he gets out of here, the better for all of them.

\--

Ian watches as Mickey fixes up Carl’s leg.

It shouldn’t be this interesting - Ian’s watched Carl get patched up from injuries a hundred times, it’s not exactly a novelty.  But it’s just that Mickey’s doing a really _fucking good job._ So good, in fact, that Carl doesn’t seem to be feeling the pain anymore, and has gone back to twirling his ninja star around.

Mickey finishes securing Carl’s bandages, and pulls off his surgical gloves with a _snap,_ tossing them into the trash.  Ian feels strangely disappointed, and waits for Mickey to leave.

Except that Mickey doesn’t leave.  Instead, he reaches over, and snags the star out of Carl’s hand.

“You gotta flick your wrist like _this,”_ he says, demonstrating.  “I know they don’t do it like that in the movies but Hollywood ain’t using real ones, okay.  You keep copying ninja flicks, you’re gonna keep stabbing yourself and having to get tetanus shots, and trust me when I say the novelty of that wears off after a while.”

Then he passes the star back to Carl. And Carl is looking at Mickey like he’s fucking _god_.

Ian feels a bit like he is, too. 

\--

While the kid sits in the waiting room, trying out the new way of flicking the ninja star and acting like his whole gruesome injury had never happened, Mickey leads Ian to the nurses station so he can fill out the paperwork.

All of a sudden, Mickey feels inexplicably nervous. He gives Ian the pen he’d stolen off Jackie earlier, and then leans on the desk as Ian writes, fidgeting.  It’s so fucking weird, but - he can’t help but feel _drawn_ to Ian, who is so sweet to his little brother but also exasperated by him, and who has clearly done this before, and who is south side but will admit to being gay.  He must be the bravest guy in the world, to do that, and Mickey can’t believe what he’s about to do but some of that braveness must be rubbing off on him because he does it anyway.  Just as Ian finishes scribbling out insurance details, and starts to hand Mickey back the pen, Mickey says it.

“Maybe I should give you my number.  In case your brother has any more questions about deadly weapons.  Or - in case _you_ have any - questions.”

He can feel himself blushing as he trips over his words, and feels pathetic, but Ian doesn’t seem to care.  At least, as far as Mickey can tell, because Ian’s reaction is - intense. His eyes widen and his mouth drops open dumbly, and for a second Mickey thinks he’s made a _huge_ mistake, that Ian’s about to ask him where the fuck he gets off coming onto a guy in a hospital after treating his injured brother, where the fuck he gets off thinking he’s _remotely_ good enough for a guy as hot and clearly incredibly as Ian.

But then his doubts are dispatched as swiftly as they’d arrived, because Ian’s blinking and nodding his head so fast it looks like it might topple straight off.  

“Yeah,” he says, too fast.  “Yeah, that’s a good idea.  For - safety.”  

Mickey grins, and Ian grins back.  For a second, they just stare at each other.  Grinning, looking dopily into each other’s eyes.

Then Mickey grabs an admission form from the desk and tears off the corner of the paper, scribbles his cell phone number down onto it with then pen he’d just got back, and then hands it to Ian.  Ian takes it, his grin only widening.  

Then he bites his lip, stares at Mickey for a long moment, his gaze somehow _different_ now.  Mickey can feel a tenseness in the air between them - a tenseness that isn’t altogether unpleasant.  And then Ian leans in, and says, in a voice lower than his was before, “actually, I think I have some questions _right now._ Maybe we should go somewhere and talk about them?”

Mickey swallows.  His thin scrubs are the worst pants in the world for hiding a boner, and as he watches Ian’s pupils blow when he leans in even closer, he has to angle his hips towards the desk to hide as much as he can.

“What about your brother?” he asks.  His voice comes out a little rough, like he hasn’t used it for days.  He clears his throat to try and hide that, too.  “He’s right out in the waiting room.  Do you need to like, get him home or some shit?”

Ian pauses for a moment, conflict flashing across his face.  Then he shrugs, and shifts even impossibly closer to Mickey, pressing his hand to the bare skin of Mickey’s arm, sending a jolt of electricity through Mickey’s whole body.

“We can be quick,” he says.

\--

Ian never thought he’d make out in a hospital storage cupboard, but his life is full of interesting surprises these days.  He stifles a moan as Mickey presses him against the metal shelves, ignoring the pain of the boxes full of surgical tools which are digging into his back in favour of focusing on the feeling of Mickey’s hands gripping his waist, Mickey’s rough, warm lips pressing hard against his.  Ian isn’t actually totally sure this is reality, but he knows that if he is dreaming, he wants to make the most of it while he can - and he _definitely_ doesn’t want to wake up.

Ian enjoys the feeling of Mickey’s body pressed against his for one long moment more before he shoves at Mickey, and they go stumbling back again, the control shifting as Ian pins Mickey to the shelves instead.  Mickey starts to make a noise of protest but it’s stifled into Ian’s lips, and he gives in after a second, just wrapping his arms tighter around Ian’s waist and dragging his teeth across Ian’s lower lip.  That’s more than Ian can take, and he grinds against Mickey, hips stuttering from the pressure - he’s been _painfully_ hard this whole time, it feels like his whole fucking body is focused only on coming while pressed against the glorious dream that is Mickey Milkovich.  Ian’s fine with that goal, and drags his lips down to suck on Mickey’s neck and he grinds against him again.

“Wait, fuck, wait,” Mickey says, panting, pushing Ian away with a hard shove.  Ian groans at the sudden loss of contact, leans into the feel of Mickey’s hands on his chest even as they’re shoving at him.  “Fuck.  I can’t come in my fucking scrubs, man, and I’ve got five more hours on my shift.  We gotta stop.”

Ian closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath.

“Yeah,” he agrees, even though it kills him.  He opens his eyes, takes another breath.  “Yeah, you’re right.  I gotta get back to Carl, anyway.”

For a moment, silence.  They just stare at each other, both still breathing heavily, Mickey scratching awkwardly at his lip.  Then -

“You better fuckin’ call me,” Mickey says.  “I ain’t finished with this.”

Ian grins, and leans in, presses a last quick kiss against Mickey’s rough lips.

“Promise,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> for the fic a day in may, and candyvan who ruined my life by talking to me about nurse!Mickey who is cranky and whiny but does his job better than anyone else ever and looks adorable in his scrubs and yeah you suck. i may possibly do a sequel to this. i have emotions okay SO SUE ME
> 
> send me prompts etc etc: [mickeymilk](http://mickeymilk.tumblr.com)


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